Academics

English 247. Feminist Fiction

This course is about American feminist fiction of the 1970s and 1980s. Participants will examine how the discourses of Women’s Liberation and Black feminism reshaped the imaginative constructions of women’s lives in American society. In addition to revisiting the major social movements in America of the 1930s to the 1980s, students enrolled in the class will also apply contemporary theories of identity and subjectivity to the feminist realist fiction of the Seventies and Eighties. Some attention will be given to the early Chicana feminist movement. Texts include those by authors Marge Piercy, Marilyn French, Alice Walker and Cherry Moraga, among others. The course ends with the question: Is there an enduring feminist aesthetic?

Connections

This two-course connection enables students to apply the historical study of modern America to their understanding of the art and culture of the period. Students must take and one of the creative arts or humanities courses. Connections: and , or , or or , or or

These seven connected courses focus on women in the United States, addressing the intersections of gender, race and class in U.S. history, in U.S. social structures, and in U.S. literature and literary theory. Students may combine them in a variety of ways to create two- or three-course connections with different emphases, exploring the history of […]